


One Small Step

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, M/M, Prompt Fic, Sherlock Holmes's Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7430133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some embrace the new century’s wonders easier than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Small Step

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #8, **The Wonder of the Age:** For Victorian Holmes & Watson it was things like telephones and motorcars; for current Sherlocks and John/Joan it’s more likely to be nanotechnology and/or iPhones; 22nd Century Holmes deals with androids and casual Moon travel. (For Sherlock Hound or Basil of Baker Street it’s probably flea powder.) Use or allude to such a modern miracle of the age for whatever age you choose.

Watson has always lived by a form of madness that has complimented my own. A man whose first instinct upon graduating medical school is to seek out, not a quiet lucrative practise in a respectable London quarter, but the Army, is one who thrives upon danger and adventure. I had read that in him from the very beginning, and quickly chose to include him in my work; this was the single wisest thing I have done in my life.

He has been beside me in the most perilous of situations – lying in wait long sleepless nights facing the possible sting of an adder or the blow from a merciless bank robber, facing down savage starved hounds and murderous mastiffs, cudgel-bearing brutes and trigger-mad American gangsters. The _Friesland_ business alone would have taught a less foolhardy person to keep well clear of my company, and yet he stayed, dismissing that terrifying business with a mere clause in one sentence when he wrote up another case.

This madness, however, he is experiencing without me.

I stand on the cliff overlooking the beach near our Sussex home, feet planted on terra firma, heart quailing in my breast as it never had when confronting Professor Moriarty or Killer Evans. I use every ounce of restraint to refrain from mentally listing all the ways a flimsy contraption of spruce and linen and steel-chain and gasoline can crack, collapse, plummet into the sea like Icarus or dash upon the rocks of the tide-pool. While I appreciate the wonders of modern life as much as the next man of science, I would prefer many more experiments on this device with happy outcomes before agreeing to a demonstration involving my person. Inside, I am full of fear.

But from Watson, all I hear is joyful cries.

It is his own fault he is there, for his stories have brought fame and recognition to both of us, not just in London or England but across the empire and even the Atlantic. This moment, dubious as I consider it, is a sincere gift by a pair of young bicycle-makers from Ohio, who begged for the honour of letting us experience their creation. And Watson, fearless as he ever was in his youth, agreed at once. My own greatest moment of courage came when I stood my ground and did not physically pull Watson away from the rickety-looking machine as he clambered aboard.

The ghastly noise of the engine overhead is getting louder. They are coming back to the hill.

With a rattle and thump, the aeroplane lands on the grass of the down and rumbles along like an ungainly motorcar for a long stretch before stopping.

I walk over, heart calming in my breast once again and able to sham an unaffected stroll, as if merely another curious onlooker.

Watson is standing once again, and he heads toward me. The bright look in his eyes and the spring in his step remind me of every time he has joined me in pursuit in our youth. “Glorious! Oh dear fellow, what a miracle! Ha, we flew with the gulls over the sea as if we were one of them!”

I cannot stop my own face from smiling as broadly, for Watson's joy is as infectious as ever. “A salutary experience, then, old man.”

“Old man, ha! I felt twenty again up there, or like a lad running along the beach flapping my arms as I used to do!”

The man in his mid-thirties behind us smiles broadly. He is happy to have introduced the last century to this new one in such a manner.

“Thank you, Mr. Wright,” I say.

“Call me Orville, please, Mr. Holmes,” he says, still grinning. “And the honor’s all mine, I assure you.”


End file.
